But a number of people attending this year's NYE celebration in Valletta were left confused, embarrassed and wondering what in God's name they were doing when they realised one of the last songs they'd be hearing in 2018 was the children's song-turned-meme 'Baby Shark'.

Like a weird version of The Ellen Degeneres Show with presenters Owen Bonnici, DJ Pierre Cordina and ex-Eurovision contestant Corazon instead of the affable host, Valletta's St. George's Square and the thousands of people in it became a living meme in one fell swoop.

TVM filmed the entire thing for posterity. The cringe really begins at the 93:20 mark, when a grown man begins to squish his fingers together and tells thousands of freezing people to do the same...hekk, għal-buzz.

It wasn't all the hosts' fault - some of Malta's biggest cultural organisations actually OK'ed it

The event was organised by the Valletta 2018 Foundation in collaboration with G7 Events, the Valletta Local Council, the Malta Tourism Authority, the Ministry for Tourism and the Ministry for Justice, Culture and Local Government.

Just imagine the meetings where they brought up the idea and everyone just nodded along in agreement

These are the people in charge of Malta's culture in 2019 - and they wanted to play a Baby Shark remix to end the year in typical Maltese style.

The crowd was promised "a mash-up of the best dance anthems of 2018"... but they were given so much more

The Baby Shark sing-and-dance-along was followed up with a trappy Baby Shark remix, then a remix of Justin Bieber's Despacito, then some good old-fashioned pumpin' Big Room and – of course - a remix of the 2004 hit Dragostea Din Tei to round up the genres and make sure everyone hates themselves even more in 2019 than they did in 2018.

The distorted, 'trance' version of Auld Lang Syne that is dropped after the countdown is legit the stuff of nightmares

The DJ quickly one-ups himself though, somehow messing up the beat of one of the first drops of 2019 - hear it and weep at 105:40 to 105:45 in the video.

To be fair, anyone who voluntarily chose to spend the last few hours of 2018 in a freezing Valletta surrounded by drunk people at a cultural event that Jason Micallef had any hand in was kind of asking for it.

Some Maltese memesters, like Daniel Dean Kingswell, have already had fun with the whole Baby Shark fiasco

While others were just left dumbfounded that this is how Valletta, the European Capital of Culture for 2018, would actually choose to end the year

Egg Recruitment

REMAX

Sections

Lovin Malta

Other Sites

We Respect Your Privacy

There have been many changes recently relating to the introduction of GDPR from May 25th 2018, therefore,
before you continue we wish to advise that in continuing to our website you are consenting to our Terms of Use
and understand the new privacy policy that is in effect.